Avoiding new things can be unhealthy

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
- Seneca

Many new things we face in life we fear because we perceive them as trials rather than as new experiences. The more we build fear of something, the more awesome and awful it seems.

Most of us have a natural (built-in) apprehension about facing new situations. Recent research has shown that two genes perform this function. But what we take beyond caution, to the point of fear, is unreasonable and unhealthy.

Sometimes we must assess not just the risk involved in tackling something new, but the consequences of failure. When failure will bring us nothing worse than experience we can build on later, the venture is likely worth trying.

There is no such thing in life as maintaining the status quo, keeping things "as they always were." Life slides backwards at an alarming rate for those who try. Often people who live through such a backward slide never recover. They die, eventually, as lonely anachronisms of their time.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help people improve their minds steadily as their bodies decline with age.
Learn more at http;//billallin.com/cgi/index.pl